Crystal Gayle

One quarter Cherokee Indian, Crystal Gayle was born Brenda Gail Webb, the youngest of eight children in a desperately poor family, who grew up listening to country music on the radio. She was further inspired to become a singer when her elder sister Loretta Lynn became a country star and it was Loretta who suggested she changed her name to Crystal Gayle, using her second name as surname to avoid confusion with established singer Brenda Lee. Her first single I've Cried (The Blue Right Out Of My Eyes) in 1970 was written by Loretta Lynn, as were most of her early releases; but when her record company Decca's strategy of basing her style and marketing closely on her famous sister failed miserably, she went to United Artists, teamed up with producer Allen Reynolds and began to establish her own identity. It resulted in her first significant hit Wrong Road Again in 1974 and achieved the first of 18 Number 1 country hits a couple of years later with I'll Get Over You. It made her a star on the country scene and she broke into the mainstream in 1976 with her signature song Don't It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue - a major hit all over the world. Other big hits followed, including Ready For The Times To Get Better, Talking In Your Sleep and Why Have You Left Me For The One You Left Me For. In 1982 she worked with Tom Waits on the soundtrack of the Francis Ford Coppola movie One From The Heart and had another hit, You And I, duetting with Eddie Rabbitt. In the 1990s she diversified into gospel music, recorded a children's album In My Arms in 2000 and continued to tour and record through the decade.